What Sort Of Date Are You?
by Oi-Watch-It-Spaceman
Summary: Ten and Rose are travelling as normal when they catch sight of a couple of people watching them who seem to recognise them - a red haired girl and a tall man with a bow tie. Despite the Doctor meeting his future self being incredibly risky, Rose gets a chance to talk to the future Doctor when she realises that she is no longer his companion. Oneshot


**OK, so I got "Rose and Ten meet Eleven and Amy" as an anonymous prompt on tumblr, and I don't normally write Amy or Eleven but I ****_do _****like to write them so I thought I'd give it a go. It made me a bit sad but I also worked through some feelings when I wrote it and it made me happy. Hope you like it, review if you want.**

"Doctor, who is that?"

The Doctor span abruptly 'round, away from the statue that he had been admiring ("looks like me, doesn't it Rose. Maybe we'll have to come back here a couple of hundred years earlier so I can model for it.") squinting in the sunshine at the people Rose was pointing to.

A tallish man with floppy brown hair and a bow tie was looking at them from the shade on the far side of the square. Next to him stood a young woman with red hair. The woman was smiling, looking back at the man in excitement before fixing her eyes again on the Doctor and Rose. The man was not moving, but Rose could see even from this distance that he was smiling somewhat sadly.

"He does seem to recognise me, doesn't he," the Doctor murmured, running a hand through his hair and trying not to notice how much Rose appreciated the gesture. "Us, in fact. Well, we'd better just ask him then. Come on."

He grabbed Rose's hand and they started off across the square. As soon as the man saw them coming he grabbed the arm of the tall, red-headed girl next to him and began to try and tug her away. She, however, appeared to be content on staying put, even going so far as to give the Doctor and Rose a friendly wave.

"Interesting." The Doctor broke into a run, Rose jogging along beside him. They just about skidded to a halt in front of the two mysterious strangers.

"Amy!" The man almost whined as he let go of the girl's arm. "This is dangerous enough as it is."

"Ah." The Doctor's eyes widened, and he smacked himself in the head like he always did when he was being, as he would describe it, "thick."

The man smiled at the Doctor. "Thought you'd figure it out. In fact, I can remember figuring it out years ago. I'm still good."

"Thought so." The Doctor did not sound surprised in the slightest. "Thought I felt something in my head, though I couldn't be sure. Might be configured to find other Time Lords, but sensing your own mind isn't really something that's common, even for me."

Rose's eyes flickered back and forth between the two men, before her mouth opened and she gasped. "You mean this is... future you? First leather jacket, then slim and foxy and now... sort of gangly and..."

"Cool." The Doctor looked at her, smiling, but Rose could see the sadness in his gaze. "The word you're looking for is cool, Rose Tyler."

Hearing her name in that voice sounded so wrong and so right at the same time. The syllables rolled off his tongue just like they always had. In order to avoid thinking about the implications of that, she turned her attention to the woman who had remained silent up until this point. "Sorry, we haven't met - or at least, if we have met it hasn't happened yet. I'm Rose."

"I know," the woman said in a Scottish accent, "the Doctor was telling me about you. We weren't planning to say hello, _someone _wanted to run off and hide."

"Hey, this is dangerous, I shouldn't be meeting myself, it can cause all sorts of ruptures in time."

She sighed. "Either that or you're just scared. Anyway, I'm Amy Pond. Nice to meet you. He's just finished explaining the 'changing the face' thing, I could barely believe it when he told me that was him." She gestured to Rose's Doctor, giving him a smile as she did so. The Doctor did that sort of flirty grin that he always did, but Rose didn't mind it. Amy had her own Doctor - at least, she had the same Doctor, but not right this second. .

"Well, at least you got told about it. _I _found out when he regenerated right in front of me. Went from dark and brooding to grinning maniac in a couple of seconds, then fell asleep and left me to deal with him." Both Doctors shifted uncomfortably, much to Amy's apparent delight.

"And what d'you think you're doing, coming to a place where you knew we'd be?" Rose's Doctor had raised an eyebrow, arms folded across his chest, steering the conversation away from himself and towards the mistakes of the future Doctor.

Amy's Doctor stared back defensively. "It's a big universe, sometimes I forget. Anyway, let's not start picking faults, Mr "not 12 hours, 12 months".

"Hey," Rose butted in, "that was you as well, if you recall! Brought me back home 12 months after I left, not 12 hours," she quickly explained to Amy, "my mum went absolutely mental."

"Tell me about it. Told me he'd be back in 5 minutes - 12 years."

Rose looked around at the Doctor, shocked, before giving him a smack on the arm. "You idiot!"

"Likewise," Amy added, elbowing her Doctor hard in the ribs.

"Oh, I'd rather you were fighting," Rose's Doctor said, rubbing his arm.

"The fighting was definitely more manageable, I hate it when they... gang up," the other Doctor said glumly.

Rose laughed and grinned at Amy. She felt almost a little shy, though with every second that passed she was more certain that this Doctor was the same man. She had been through this before, after all. It couldn't be that hard to do it again.

Suddenly the realisation hit her, and she felt her eyes widen and her breath hitch in her throat. This was the Doctor's future - not too distant future, if she guessed correctly - and there was no Rose. She wanted to believe that this was far enough ahead that she and the Doctor had had their time together, but the expression on the future Doctor's face when he looked at her was enough to convince her otherwise.

She felt tears welling up in her eyes, and no matter how determined she was not to cry she could not hold back the flood of emotion. Where was she in his future?

"Sorry, just give me a sec," she managed to choke out, interrupting the conversation that had gone on without her, about where exactly her Doctor was in his time stream and why the future Doctor couldn't say anything about where he and Amy were headed next. She stumbled away from the little group, walking to the little fountain in the corner of the square and sitting on its stone rim in the shade. Rose hoped that they weren't staring at her – this was the sort of thing she really needed to work through in private, lying on her duvet and crying into a pillow until the pain was dulled and she could think logically about things. As it was, she pulled one knee up to her chest and rested her head on it, feeling the cold of the stone through her jeans and trying not to panic.

"This seat taken?" The familiar yet unfamiliar voice made her jump, and she snapped her head up to see the Doctor – not her own Doctor, the future one – standing next to her. She nodded slowly, holding herself very still as he seated himself a reasonable distance away. They both stared across the square in silence. Rose caught the sight of the Doctor and Amy. The Doctor was explaining something, complete with his normal array of hand gestures and facial expressions, and Amy was laughing along with him.

"He's telling her about how he wants to be ginger," the Doctor said. "I remember it from my past, talking to Amy about it. Always was jealous of her hair colour, maybe that's why I liked Donna-"

He stopped abruptly, shifting and looking at Rose out of the corner of his eye. "Sorry. That's in your future, not my past. It's lucky really – I'd just regenerated when I met Amy, still wasn't done yet. If I hadn't been a bit frazzled I'd probably have recognised her from meeting her in my past."

"So you..." Rose paused, not sure what she wanted to say. "So you regenerated from... from him, into you? None in between?"

"Nope." The Doctor stretched, crossing his legs casually. "He wanted to come and see if you were alright, but I told him I'd better do it. Not that I need to ask; I know what's wrong."

Rose peeked up at him through her hair. "You do?"

"Of course I do. I'm the Doctor – if there's one thing I'm good at, it's reading you like a book, Rose Tyler."

She smiled despite herself. "It sounds strange when you say it."

"True. But I have missed saying it." He was looking at her in the same way he had always looked at her, whatever regeneration he was in. It was a look that made her feel as if he could see inside her, as if his eyes could penetrate into her mind and see everything she was thinking and more.

"I bet I miss you too." She felt her voice crack but pushed the rest of the sentence out anyway. She didn't know what she expected him to say.

He sighed, twisting his hands together before touching his hand to his bow tie – it occurred to her that her own Doctor would have been running his hands through his hair at this point. Different mannerisms, same man. "I can't tell you anything. I can't tell you what will happen or where you are or if you're even alive." Rose felt the tears sparkling in her eyes again. "The only thing you have to remember is that, one day, you'll probably be wondering if I'm happy. And I am. Whatever happens, however you might feel about me and the choices I made, remember that I will be alright. I'm always alright." They both smiled for a moment, remembering Rose's annoyance at his constant use of this obvious lie. "Of course I'll never forget, never get over it, but I'm OK. I am living a fantastic life, just like you will be."

The use of that phrase, the words that her first Doctor had used when he had thought he would never see her again, broke her, and Rose found herself throwing her arms around the Doctor. The tweed of his jacket felt different that the pinstriped suit she was accustomed to, and her arms didn't fit round him in quite the same way, but it was still the Doctor, and it felt right. She buried her face in his jacket and cried. "This is stupid," she muttered, pulling away and wiping her eyes, "you're still here, just over there, we're gonna be back in the TARDIS again before you know it."

The Doctor's smile seemed to bubble up from the bottom of his hearts. "Yes you are. And it is going to be fantastic."

"I'm glad I got to see you like this. Still, I reckon he's better looking." She nodded her head towards her Doctor. He had been juggling before, Amy throwing things for him to add to the bits and bobs he was tossing carelessly above his head, but now they were leaning against the statue that resembled the Doctor, talking seriously.

"Well, I've never looked at him from this angle, but I daresay you might be right. Still he doesn't wear a bow tie." He adjusted it proudly.

Rose reached out an arm and tweaked it. "New new new Doctor," she said softly, and the Doctor remembered another day where they had sat together, Rose having to get used to his new face.

"Dame Rose," he said as calmly as he could, standing up and offering her a hand, "would you care, in honour of our first date, to partake of chips, with me."

Rose stood up immediately, wiping the last vestiges of tears from her face and taking his hand in her own. "Why, Sir Doctor, I thought you'd never ask."

Although the Doctor had spent a fair amount of time juggling and giggling with Amy, they had still found time to talk. Before Amy said a word, the Doctor had warned her that she couldn't give away anything major about his future – her past - as it could have devastating effects on the universe. Amy had nodded her agreement before launching into conversation.

The Doctor could see why he would choose to bring her alone. She was warm and happy and intelligent, and he found himself looking forward to their adventures to come.

"So, without giving anything away, what did the Doctor tell you about... about us." Of course he meant Rose, and he saw that Amy could tell what he was trying to ask. He had been feeling that something bad was approaching for some time now, and he found that he couldn't stop himself from trying to find out if it was inevitable.

"He told me..." Amy paused, tilting her head to the side as she pondered what she could and couldn't tell him. "He told me that she was brilliant. He told me that after the Time War she helped you to heal and feel alive again." The Doctor nodded, acknowledging the truth of her words. "He told me that she's somewhere safe and that she's happy." The Doctor stopped breathing. "But I can't tell you how or where that is. He told me that you love her." At that, the Doctor's head snapped towards Rose and his future self. She was hugging him tightly, burying her head in his shoulder in the way the Doctor knew she did when she couldn't help but cry. "And he told me that you couldn't tell her, but that she always knew."

"It looks like I told you a lot about her."

Amy shrugged. "The only thing he said apart from that was that he knew that one day he would see her again, just for one day, and so he wanted me to know who she was. I know he meets people in the wrong order a lot, so I didn't really question it." Amy was looking at him with wide, understanding eyes. She reached forward and covered his hand with her own. "I didn't realise until now how much she meant – means – to you."

The Doctor had just about frozen. Somehow or other he managed to move his other hand and place it over Amy's, thanking her with words that he could not seem to say.

"It's OK. You're still no good at talking about things, I didn't expect any different." He managed a laugh at that. "It's a pity we couldn't spend longer here though, you're... a lot different than he is."

The Doctor smirked a little and pointed a finger at her. "Oi, behave you. I may be slim and a little bit foxy – and yes, that has been confirmed – but I am not your Doctor and you, Miss Pond, have a fiancée."

Amy gaped. "How did you know?"

"Psychic." The Doctor waggled his eyebrows. "Also, he was signing at me over your head." He nodded at a point just over Amy's shoulder, and she swung around to see the future Doctor and Rose approaching.

"I didn't know you could sign!"

"Neither did I, come to that," Rose said. "Anyway, the Doctor – well, _this _Doctor – suggested chips. I am definitely up for that, I don't know about you two." Rose's Doctor nodded and Amy grinned widely. "Right then, chips it is and you can pay."

Both the Doctors shrugged. "No money," they replied in unison.

Rose rolled her eyes. "What sort of date are you?" All three of them laughed, though Amy looked a little bewildered. "Old joke," Rose explained, feeling a sudden pang for the Doctor who was missing, her wonderful big-eared Doctor with his sarcasm and leather jacket. _Always the same man, _she reminded herself, trying not to let her emotions get the better of her again.

When it came time to say goodbye, Rose watched as first Amy and then the future Doctor bid her Doctor farewell. He seemed quieter than usual and slightly troubled, but he beamed at them nevertheless, telling Amy that he would "see her a bit later" with a wink. Then it was Rose's turn.

"It was wonderful to meet you Rose – I'm just glad I know who he's talking about now. Be happy." Amy gave her a hug, and Rose found herself glad that the Doctor could have a companion like Amy in the future. She seemed to be good for him. Then, before she knew it, the Doctor was standing in front of her, the future of her Doctor, with such a look in his eyes that her throat swelled shut with unshed tears and sobs that never quite formed.

"Just remember Rose: the beach is not the end." She just looked at him, committing the message to memory even though it confused her. He pulled her into a quick hug, before pulling back and looking at her, hands coming to rest on her shoulders. "My Rose Tyler," he said softly. He leaned in and kissed her gently on the forehead, before turning around and walking away, Amy following him until they vanished into the shadows down the alleyway where Rose assumed his TARDIS was parked.

She turned away, catching sight of her Doctor, pinstriped and spiky haired and utterly serious, leaning against a statue with his arms folded. His eyes were dark and searching as he looked at her, trying to figure out what she was feeling. Unable to stand it any longer, she ran over and flung herself at him, arms gripping tightly around his neck. His arms were around her in an instant, and for a few seconds Rose let herself feel the solidness of his body and convinced herself that she would never ever leave him.

"Can we go now, please?" She whispered into his shoulder, and felt his answering nod. They wandered back to the TARDIS hand in hand, staying that way for a long time even when they went inside. Neither was ready to let go of the other just yet.

A while later, standing cold and lonely on a windswept beach, Rose dug her nails into her palms in determination. The Doctor's words came floating back to her as if they were carried on the sea breeze. _The beach is not the end._

She turned and walked swiftly across the sand, vowing not to set foot on the beach again, a place she had returned to periodically for the past few months, until she had found a way back to the Doctor. He had given her that, at least. Now she knew there had to be a way back.

Rose allowed herself a tiny smile, the first that had crossed her face since she had been stranded in this universe, and began to make plans inside her head. This would not be the end for either of them. He had told her so himself.

A long time later, standing on that beach yet again, hand in hand with a man who was the same and yet different – how many times was that going to happen to her? – Rose remember those words once again. She stared blankly at the space that had been occupied by the TARDIS only a few seconds before. Then, as if drawn by an invisible force or pulled by a piece of string, her head turned towards the Doctor, just as his turned towards her.

_The beach is not the end._

Whatever happened to them, Rose would not let it be the end. So many years ago, the Doctor had told her he was living a fantastic life, just as she was. So she would. With her own Doctor, in her own universe, she would live a fantastic life.

She stared into the eyes of her Doctor, composing herself before trying a small smile, squeezing his hand tightly. He smiled back, the grin that she knew so well, and Rose was certain that, in the end, everything would be alright.

At least she got the better looking one. Even the Doctor had had to agree with her on that.


End file.
